On North Korea, there are two options, deterrence and war. And only one of those options makes sense.
Nicolas Kristof is pessimistic about the North Korea situation:
Kristoff’s assessment is a grim one, but it’s one that appears to be becoming more common among foreign policy analysts here in the United States and other parts of the world. Leaving aside the issues raised by the fact that Donald Trump is President, the seeming intransigence of the Kim regime is apparent for anyone to see. Despite repeated warnings from the United States and China, both in public and in private, Kim Jong Un seems to be on the inevitable course of pursuing both more powerful thermonuclear weapons and a missile-based delivery system that is steadily proving to be able to deliver a payload further and more accurately with each test. We’re already at the point where the DPRK has missiles capable of reaching U. S. territories in the Pacific as well as Hawaii, Alaska, and a good portion of the western United States, not to mention closer potential targets in Japan, South Korea, Australia, and elsewhere in Asia. It won’t be much longer before they will also be able to reach the rest of the Continental United States and Europe. Neither the threat of an American attack nor threats by China to cut off the financial aid and markets that help keep the North Korean military awash in cash and the civilian population placated enough to avoid unrest. This follows the same pattern laid down by his Grandfather two decades ago when Kim’s grandfather began pursuing a nuclear weapons program and it’s unlikely to stop until either North Korea has the kind of nuclear arsenal that would make it feel secure, it agrees to abandon any further research, or the Kim regime is deposed. The first option is one that American Presidents and other world leaders have said is unacceptable, the second seems unlikely given the way that the regime has behaved for the past quarter century under three separate rules, and the third would either require a coup of some kind or a war.
As Kyle Mizokami notes at The National Interest, that final option would be a nightmare that would make Iraq and Afghanistan seem like a picnic by comparison:
While the United States and its South Korean ally, with probable support of some kind from nations such as Japan, Australia, and Great Britain, would most likely eventually succeed in a campaign against the DPRK, the price would be a far heavier one than anything the United States has seen since the Vietnam War or the original Korean War. For one thing, any invasion of the north would likely result in retaliation from North Korean forces on the other side of the Demilitarized Zone, which have the power unleash the power of tens of thousands of rockets and artillery pieces against not only any invading forces but also against the civilian population in Seoul and other major cities in South Korea and against American bases in both South Korea and in Japan. Additionally, the kind of amphibious invasion from the east and the west that Mizokami envisions would require coordination not dissimilar from the landing at Inchon at the start of the Korean War and the invasion of Normandy during World War Two, and that invasion would take place against a well-trained North Korean military that would have numerical superiority even notwithstanding what would likely be a sustained pre-invasion aerial campaign. It would, in other words, be a war unlike anything we’ve seen in fifty years:
All of this means, of course, that war is the last resort, and everyone seems to agree with that idea. Rationally, then, both sides should be willing to avoid war at any price, but as Dan Abrams notes, that’s what people thought about Saddam Hussein too:
All of this goes a long way toward saying that the odds that diplomatic efforts to derail the North Korean nuclear program will be successful are somewhere between slim and none. At that same time, war would clearly be equally unacceptable unless we are willing to pay a price in lives and destruction unlike anything the world has seen in more than a half century. As Dave Majumdar notes in The National Interest, that leaves one only real acceptable option:
Given the choice, deterrence would obviously be the more rational strategy for the West, but that would require a major shift in current policy for the United States and its allies. In the end, though, it may be the only sane option left on the table.
Obama managed it pretty well for his 8 years.
Just a few months into “master negotiator” Trump’s administration and the whole thing is falling apart.
Guess we know who the better executive is.
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If the US was smart, we’d carpet the North Korean peninsula with South Korean soap operas and subtitled Marvel comic movies.
What’s funny is Kristof wrote this article before the Saudi crown prince started making waves. With such a weak and feckless Sec of State, the Trump Administration mired in indictments and scandal, the odds of little brushfire wars popping up are much more likely since everyone senses the United States is not really paying attention.
I think the North Korea chatter is simply a smokescreen by the Trump administration to get Putin to “broker peace.”
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